Big Diablo 3 Announcement May Be VERY Soon.
Jay Wilson replied to a question on his twitter account today. A user asking on a scale of 1 to 10, how close we are to a big announcement? Jay replied with "9"

Official Blizzard Quote:

on a scale of 1 to 10, (1=not even close, 10=imminent,) how close are we to that all important #D3 announcement?
9

Magic Find - Now Shared Between Group
Not so long ago the blues where posting about magic find and groups. Today we have conformation that magic find has had a bit of a change. It now is split between your group. A blue posted on the Polish forums with a bit more information on how this change will take place (thanks to straightup for the link)

Our developers have decided that bonuses + Magic Find, Gold Find + and + XP but will work differently for groups of players. These bonuses will be equal for each character in the group and subsidiaries sum bonuses for all players.

The group consists of four players. In total, their stats are 50% MF, +20% GF and 10% XP, each of these players will have a 12.5% ​​MF, 5% and 2.5% GF XP being in such a group.

Playing with a companion, available for rent, as at present receive 20% bonus to the statistics of type 'adventure' with a bonus companion visible on the panel.

As long as there are interesting and unique choices, there will be 1 answer that people could agree is the statistical "best" choice. That's a reality we all have to agree upon, because that's the reality of a game that's based on math and numbers. There will be some "right" answer.

The goal is not to ensure there isn't a right answer, that's likely an improbably achieved goal. The goal is to ensure there is a large number of viable alternatives. Sure there may be a best that's .01% stronger, but is the second best close enough that if someone prefers playing that they won't feel like they're playing wrong? It's that gap and that idea of viability that's more important.

If you want to compare that to assignable stats in Diablo II, there was one or two ways to correctly assign stats and there were really no viable alternatives. Any choice but those one or two right ways to spend stats and you were far, far below viable in comparison.

This is where you can argue that we could balance assignable stats so that they are balanced and viable! And I say ... we have! Assignable stats are now so much more awesome because they're based on itemization instead of as a requirement for it, and more importantly it's way cooler than clicking a little button.

Talking to Wyatt about this a little more and he brought up some good, additional points.

You will not be farming bosses. Bosses won't drop the best loot, they won't even drop really great loot. Part of Inferno and our intent with getting people out into the world and hunting and killing lots of different things is putting the best loot on rare and champion packs, and the great thing about rare and champion packs is they have random affixes. They're like a box of chocolates. Murderous, snarling, blood-soaked chocolates. You're not going up against a boss where you know "Build A" is the best way to minmax against it because it has abilities and resistances X, Y, and Z. What is the best build vs. an "Arcane Enchanted, Teleporter, Frozen, Knockback" skeleton pack? Got that figured out? Cause it's not going to be the best against the next pack you come across, and you're going to want to kill that one just as much.

You might have a specialized build that is super strong against some of these things, and not against others. The focus is going to be on the balance between taking on all of these possibilities and surviving.

The one question mark for a lot of people, and maybe even us, is what stops someone from seeing a pack, backing out (or dying) and swapping out to be better equipped to handle it? We agree that's now how we want people to be playing, but know it's something we can solve pretty easily, even if it's making the swapping cooldown longer in later difficulties.

In any case, his point was that you could absolutely make the best build against one type of enemy, and that build could completely fail against another. It's not D2 where you pump all your points into one ability, we're going for some depth in our combat, but it's your choice of tools (and there are a lot of them) that will define your character versus another.

EU Beta Wave
A huuuuuge bunch of keys were sent out in this first wave, so somebody here ought to be amongst those who have received one :-)

Will the second wave be even Bigger ????
A little too early to say I'm afraid.

cool, any ETA for the second wave?
Not yet, but it should be somewhere between Soon and Soonish. After the waves have been sent, there should hopefully be very healthy number of European players in the beta as well :-)

I personally don't know anyone who got a key in the first wave... :-P
Well, the number of people who opted in for the beta is huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugeish, so I guess it is possible that the people you know may not be amongst those who got picked today ;-) (Blue Tracker / Official Forums )

Follower GF and MF Gear
The amount displayed is your share of the bonus. You get 20% of your follower’s Magic Find, Gold Find, and + to XP. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums )

We understand that picking out the appropriate desktop wallpaper to fit your tastes and complement your décor can be an arduous task. To that end, we’ll be offering you help regularly by featuring a new downloadable Diablo III, StarCraft II or World of Warcraft wallpaper image on our community sites.

Comments

Prediction: There will be at least one build that will be able to stack MF through the roof but still be a solid contributor to a group - not in absolute terms of DPS, but by taking nothing but debuffs/buffs.

Public Chat: "Looking for MF-WD* for group - must have 1000%MF and buff pack build" repeated endlessly....

I hate the word "soon". They use it way too often in that blue posts. I wonder why they still use it. It means nothing. It could be "within a few hours", "this month", "this year" or even "this decade".

guys, just give me a chance to play d3 beta for two hours, ill be more than satisfied about the game and could even wait 3 months more. contact me via email [email protected]

And you think with 4 posts here you can just get it off someone?

OT: I don't like the shared MF , i mean there's seperate loot anyway, and it seems punishing as it is, unless the total divided amount of %MF get's added to your own personal MF...which would make it kinda awesome imho.

And people claiming to have insiders that claim to know the date of release date announcement, seriously.... how many times have we seen that so far, with what results? Exactly , they were all merely guessing so don't get your hopes up about any insider info.

lol I made a huge feedback e-mail showing how not shared MF, GF and XP could lead into situation were people would have huge advante on picking MF/GF gear instead of get stronger and this could lead into a very harmful enviorment in high end coop pubs. And how sahred MF/GF bonuses completlty solves the problem sin all sitations.

Looks like many others gave similar feedback and Blizz agreed. It's nice to see how responsive they are.. for me it proves that feedback and not agreeing with everything they put is valid and good for the game and the community. And that they actually listen to us, but doesn't mean they won't judge our suggestions.

lol I made a huge feedback e-mail showing how not shared MF, GF and XP could lead into situation were people would have huge advante on picking MF/GF gear instead of get stronger and this could lead into a very harmful enviorment in high end coop pubs. And how sahred MF/GF bonuses completlty solves the problem sin all sitations.

Looks like many others gave similar feedback and Blizz agreed. It's nice to see how responsive they are.. for me it proves that feedback and not agreeing with everything they put is valid and good for the game and the community. And that they actually listen to us, but doesn't mean they won't judge our suggestions.

lol I made a huge feedback e-mail showing how not shared MF, GF and XP could lead into situation were people would have huge advante on picking MF/GF gear instead of get stronger and this could lead into a very harmful enviorment in high end coop pubs. And how sahred MF/GF bonuses completlty solves the problem sin all sitations.

Looks like many others gave similar feedback and Blizz agreed. It's nice to see how responsive they are.. for me it proves that feedback and not agreeing with everything they put is valid and good for the game and the community. And that they actually listen to us, but doesn't mean they won't judge our suggestions.

"9" means we're 90% of the way there.... of course that clock started ticking in 2001.... so, let's see.... 90% of 12 years.... we only have about another 1 year and 3 months until they definitely make an announcement about the launch date